UHD Blu-ray Disc Authentication Poll

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

We are getting into the realm of speculation here, but, if you had a disc requiring online authentication and you had to replace the player that the Title Key had previously been loaded on, you could rightfully claim that the disc was defective because it would not play on your new player. I doubt that there would be any difficulty in getting the studio to replace the disc with one that contained a Title Key.

I think what you meant by the AACS 2.0a (enhanced) comment is that you hope the studios never use it. It is already in effect.

Do you really think that the studios that use online authentication will not only make discs that don't need it after the servers go down, but give them away for free to customers who previously bought discs that needed online authentication?

What kind of fantasy world are you living in?

[garyd97]

I am not sure why anybody here would buy a disc with this garbage on it.

[raygendreau]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

You really believe they would actually be that nice? The studios and game companies never have before when prior authentication-required media went dark.

They would just say "tough sh!t."

AACS 2.0a Enhanced is what you call a poisoned pill.

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Do you really think that the studios that use online authentication will not only make discs that don't need it after the servers go down, but give them away for free to customers who previously bought discs that needed online authentication?

What kind of fantasy world are you living in?

I live in the real world, where studios send out postage paid mailers to return defective discs and within a week or two send out a replacement disc. I have had this happen several times over the years.

In the hypothetical case where a disc requiring online authentication could no longer access a Title Key, that disc would be considered defective and unplayable. If you are a law abiding citizen, the studios are not your enemy.

Online authentication, in addition to deterring piracy, could offer possibilities for additional studio revenue, for themselves and the theater owners.

Consumers could conceivably preorder and receive UHD BRs before the theatrical release date of a movie. On the street date, the consumer would load the disc and receive the key, enabling play on the release date. The disc may have been delivered weeks or months prior to the street date. For an additional fee, the Title Key could be delivered, say a week earlier than street date. (Offers and tokens that would allow this were discussed in some of the Wikileaks Sony documents about the Copy/Export option previously known as Digital Bridge) Taking this a step further, for a greater fee, you could receive a Title Key day and date with the theatrical release. This would require a revenue sharing agreement with theater owners.

The possibility of watching a movie in the comfort of your home the same day it is released in the theater or a week before the physical media release date will appeal to many consumers.

For the retailers, it means getting the discs out of inventory and into the hands of consumers which will reduce costs.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

I live in the real world, where studios send out postage paid mailers to return defective discs and within a week or two send out a replacement disc. I have had this happen several times over the years.

In the hypothetical case where a disc requiring online authentication could no longer access a Title Key, that disc would be considered defective and unplayable. If you are a law abiding citizen, the studios are not your enemy.

Online authentication, in addition to deterring piracy, could offer possibilities for additional studio revenue, for themselves and the theater owners.

Consumers could conceivably preorder and receive UHD BRs before the theatrical release date of a movie. On the street date, the consumer would load the disc and receive the key, enabling play on the release date. The disc may have been delivered weeks or months prior to the street date. For an additional fee, the Title Key could be delivered, say a week earlier than street date. (Offers and tokens that would allow this were discussed in some of the Wikileaks Sony documents about the Copy/Export option previously known as Digital Bridge) Taking this a step further, for a greater fee, you could receive a Title Key day and date with the theatrical release. This would require a revenue sharing agreement with theater owners.

The possibility of watching a movie in the comfort of your home the same day it is released in the theater or a week before the physical media release date will appeal to many consumers.

For the retailers, it means getting the discs out of inventory and into the hands of consumers which will reduce costs.

News flash: these giant corporations are not your friends either.

You think many people are going to shell out HUGE sums of money to watch a disc at home on theatrical release day only to find out that the disc may end up being one of the most expensive rentals ever?

[KRW1]

I actually quite like the idea of paying extra to watch it the same time as the cinema release.

HUGE sums of money? How much are we talking? The price of two cinema tickets to watch a movie once in a room full of other people? The likes of Curzon Online charge something like a tenner to watch a movie online when it's in theaters, that's not extortionate.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by KRW1

I actually quite like the idea of paying extra to watch it the same time as the cinema release.

You'll pay a lot more than a theatrical ticket... rest assured.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

You'll pay a lot more than a theatrical ticket... rest assured.

Do we know this for a fact? It all seems to be guesswork as far as I can see.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by KRW1

Do we know this for a fact? It all seems to be guesswork as far as I can see.

There are a few test bench cases with movies being distributed via various home media channels day-n-date with the theatrical run.

The prices were breath taking.

No thank you.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

There are a few test bench cases with movies being distributed via various home media channels day-n-date with the theatrical run.

The prices were breath taking.

No thank you.

What sort of prices do you think we'd be looking at, then? Ballpark. My only experience is Curzon Online where you can watch (mainly indie) movies online during their run for around £10. I can cope with that. That's a Saturday night out at home for cheap.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by KRW1

What sort of prices do you think we'd be looking at, then? Ballpark. My only experience is Curzon Online where you can watch (mainly indie) movies online during their run for around £10. I can cope with that.

For a UHD disc with all the bells n whistles... I'd say $45-$60.

Remember, the MSRP's for these can be pretty high to begin with (LD prices) and this is for theatrical release date viewing, so no Amazon or Best Buy discounting.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

For a UHD disc with all the bells n whistles... I'd say $45-$60.

Remember, the MSRP's for these can be pretty high to begin with (LD prices) and this is for theatrical release date viewing, so no Amazon or Best Buy discounting.

That is a lot, but it's still the price of a trip to the cinema for two, by the time you add it all up. I'd do it for The Force Awakens, but not for much else! No sir.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

I live in the real world, where studios send out postage paid mailers to return defective discs and within a week or two send out a replacement disc. I have had this happen several times over the years.

In the hypothetical case where a disc requiring online authentication could no longer access a Title Key, that disc would be considered defective and unplayable. If you are a law abiding citizen, the studios are not your enemy.

The examples of defective discs you've mentioned are accidents: mastering errors or manufacturing defects. No one is going to accidentally make a disc require online authentication. The key for each title will remain available on a servers as long as the studio supports that title. After they've dropped support for the title they obviously won't be making new discs just for the sake of providing free replacements. Have you ever got a replacement for an out-of-print title?

If their only goal is truly just to stop pre-release piracy then only the initial shipment of each title should require online authentication. But I highly doubt that would ever be the case.

[Opips3]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

You'll pay a lot more than a theatrical ticket... rest assured.

I never go theatre ticket. Now I have free two tickets. I can't wait to watch batman vs superman!

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

We are getting into the realm of speculation here, but, if you had a disc requiring online authentication and you had to replace the player that the Title Key had previously been loaded on, you could rightfully claim that the disc was defective because it would not play on your new player. I doubt that there would be any difficulty in getting the studio to replace the disc with one that contained a Title Key.

I think what you meant by the AACS 2.0a (enhanced) comment is that you hope the studios never use it. It is already in effect.

What if it's several hundreds of discs, some of which might be OOP? Replacing them will be so convenient.

This isn't some extreme "realm of speculation" that has 0 chance of happening like having a meteorite strike your blu ray player so that it doesn't work anymore. Blu ray players die eventually. I spent a fortune on an Oppo blu ray player and it died after 4 years.

And what happens if you want to watch a UHD you own at a friend's place, on his UHD blu ray player? Or borrow a disc from/to your friend? Is that some extreme speculation that will never happen as well?

All this reminds me of the "When have you not had access to the Internet the last time?" excuse that Microsoft spokeseman had in defense of Xbox One's 24 hour online connectivity requirement. That's not the point. The point is that when I buy something, I don't want these stupid restrictions.

[raygendreau]

While not OOP, here is an example of a disc that became defective several years after purchase and was replaced at no cost to me. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...0&postcount=15

Time based correction key delivery via online authentication will probably not be the primary use of this process. It will (optionally) be used for the Copy/Export function as described here:

“Content Export
AACS has two methods of exporting content from the Blu-ray disc:  Blu-ray Copy – a bit-for-bit copy in the Blu-ray format, including AACS, on the player device’s hard disk or to portable media  Common Media Package (“CMP”) Export – the video and audio content is exported and repackaged into the CMP format and different ecosystem These methods of content export will be available to both AACS1 and AACS2 and will be introduced around the same time as (but later than) AACS2”

http://www.cptwg.org/assets/2015/201...esentation.pdf

The Martian UHD BR disc contains four main folders labeled AACS, BDMV, CERTIFICATE, and DFEX, a typical BD contains two folders, BDVM and Certificate. The DFEX (Digital File Export?) folder may contain data that would enable bit for bit UHD BR copy to external storage. The source of this information on AVS Forum did not open the DFEX folder, so I don’t know if the folder was empty or actually contained data.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by raygendreau

While not OOP, here is an example of a disc that became defective several years after purchase and was replaced at no cost to me. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...0&postcount=15

Since it wasn't out-of-print that example isn't the same situation at all. My expectation if discs with online authentication sell well is that most discs will work just fine for a couple decades. After that the servers will go down and the discs won't be able to get the keys they need. All those discs will become useless and due to them being long out-of-print you won't get any support from the studios.

If discs that require online authentication don't sell well than very few will use it and it's even possible that studios will make new discs that don't need it for existing titles. In which case they might provide free replacements. But that is only if the discs that don't sell well... if you want discs without online authentication then you should never support discs that have online authentication.

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Time based correction key delivery via online authentication will probably not be the primary use of this process. It will (optionally) be used for the Copy/Export function as described here:

“Content Export
AACS has two methods of exporting content from the Blu-ray disc:  Blu-ray Copy – a bit-for-bit copy in the Blu-ray format, including AACS, on the player device’s hard disk or to portable media  Common Media Package (“CMP”) Export – the video and audio content is exported and repackaged into the CMP format and different ecosystem These methods of content export will be available to both AACS1 and AACS2 and will be introduced around the same time as (but later than) AACS2”

http://www.cptwg.org/assets/2015/201...esentation.pdf

The Martian UHD BR disc contains four main folders labeled AACS, BDMV, CERTIFICATE, and DFEX, a typical BD contains two folders, BDVM and Certificate. The DFEX (Digital File Export?) folder may contain data that would enable bit for bit UHD BR copy to external storage. The source of this information on AVS Forum did not open the DFEX folder, so I don’t know if the folder was empty or actually contained data.

If this is true it wouldn't bother me at all. If online authentication is only used for an optional feature than I'll just ignore that feature. But at this point we don't really have any solid information about how, when, or if online authentication will be used.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by KRW1

Ah, thanks, I think I get it, but, really, I know this is shaky ground but most disc based piracy as I see it comes after release date anyway. As I thought we'd established, most pre-release date piracy comes nowadays from Web Downloads from streaming on demand sites which coincide with the cinema release more and more often.

yup, that is the issue and why I keep on pointing out the obvious that it has 0% chance of hurting piracy and bringing in extra cash to studios, even if it could work the best it could do is stop someone from watching a pirated copy of a film a few days before the UHD BD release. The guy that would rather watch the film for free then rent it won't magically say "It is release day, I will go pay to watch it" it is a crazy idea because if the guy had any ethical issues with pirating and wanted a legit source there are expensive ones (buy the BD) and cheaper ones (wait to buy the BD/DVD, rent the film...) . That could be true if we are talking about a DRM that would mean that a pirated copy only becomes available 10 years later i.e. " I am not waiting 10 years so I will pay to watch it."

The only thing it can do is hurt the legitimate buyer. For example every time I travel for business outside the country I like to go to shops and buy films, it is the only way to buy most international none Hollywood films. I go to the shop, ask for some recommendations make sure they pass the master (i.e. have original dialog/sub/dub in a language I understand, when I did not have a region free player the region code of the disk...) and buy a few to watch when I go home. But with this how am I to know if the disk needs a connection and that the connection will not allow me to watch the film because I am in Canada? An other example is that I can still play on my Atari if I want, I can watch films on VHS,LD,DVD and BD that I bought but in Dec, my nephew asked if he could use some of the DC/UV codes that came with my BDs to put a couple of films on his phone to bring them on vacation, he tried three or four of them and they were all expired and gave up on the idea.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

The only thing it can do is hurt the legitimate buyer. For example every time I travel for business outside the country I like to go to shops and buy films, it is the only way to buy most international none Hollywood films. I go to the shop, ask for some recommendations make sure they pass the master (i.e. have original dialog/sub/dub in a language I understand, when I did not have a region free player the region code of the disk...) and buy a few to watch when I go home. But with this how am I to know if the disk needs a connection and that the connection will not allow me to watch the film because I am in Canada? An other example is that I can still play on my Atari if I want, I can watch films on VHS,LD,DVD and BD that I bought but in Dec, my nephew asked if he could use some of the DC/UV codes that came with my BDs to put a couple of films on his phone to bring them on vacation, he tried three or four of them and they were all expired and gave up on the idea.

Even if you don't travel, it'll hurt the importer. I've got blus from Japan, India, Italy, Australia, France and Russia amongst tons from the US and UK - bought because the title wasn't available elsewhere. How's that going to work?

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by KRW1

So if this is in any way true, once the release date is passed, there's no need for online authentification so, for all intents and purposes, it won't be a consumer issue at all.

So if a film comes out on, say 20 May, from 20 May onwards, the online key disappears and no-one even realises it was a thing unless they had the disc on 19 May.

NO. IT is all or nothing. If the title key is on the disk it will always play (may 19'th or May 20'th, if the title key is not on the disk it is not on the disk and so it needs to find it for it to play

Got it. So why is anyone bothered about it? If you buy a locked disc, simply wait for the street date to pass, and, hey presto, unlocked disc.

because in theory it is that simple. The issue is reality, What happens if on May 20'th you go to watch it and the server is hampered because there are a few million other people trying to watch that same film at the same time or down for any other reason and so the title key can't be DLed for the disk to work on launch day (or the day you try and watch it)? I don't know about you but I bought my first BD player Sept 2006, my first PS3 Dec 2006... none of which are still in my home, it is nice to talk about DL the title key once but that is a lie the minute you change player the title key will need to be DLed again to the new player (and possibly to an old player if it gets corrupted or erased to make space for other title keys and stuff) and the further from the launch date the more the chance that it won't be there to be Dled again. This requires a connection to check BD player:"hi can I have the title key", server "no it is May 19th" or "yes it is May 20'th here it is" what happens when I want to bring this disk to my friends cottage where an internet connection is impossible, or my sister's cottage where it is not allowed other ways my BiL would work all day while they should be relaxing or my other friend that just does not see the value in it " most months I can only make it up here for a few hours 50$ is way to expensive for the little use I would do".

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

Ray, is it possible to have internet authentication on an enabled disc ONLY when it is played before the street date? For example, let's say The Peanuts Movie has it. The street date is 3/8. Can the system work where the disc will only need authentication only before that date? There could be some internal clock in the player perhaps?

Or will that disc always need authentication on first use in any player because it's not possible to verify the date without an internet connection?

Always, it is not the date that is important, that is just marketing and the official simple reason that is given. Like Ray said

Originally Posted by raygendreau

Here is how the process works: There is a Title Key Server maintained by the studio. There is a (time based) Correction Key Server maintained by AACS. A UHD BR disc requiring online authentication is loaded into a UHD player. The player, via the internet seeks authorization from the AACS server to receive a Title Key from the studio Title Key server. If the request is received on or after the UHD BR street date, the player will receive authorization from the AACS server to acquire the Title Key from the studio server. (If the request is received by the AACS server before the UHD BR street date, the player will not receive a Title Key.) The Title Key is placed in local storage on the player. Once the Title Key is on the player, that specific UHD BR may be played without an internet connection only on that player

the title key is part of the encryption and the disk is useless without it. So does the server say “yes” and the Title key is DL and the player can decrypt the film or not. is all that matters

The problem is that reality makes it more complicated, for example if you have the Wizard of Oz BD you will see the WB logo on the cover, you will also see when it starts the MGM lion. Why? because when it was made it was made by MGM but in 1986 when MGM had financial issues they sold the rights for most of their classics (including the wizard of Oz) to Turner entertainment and in 1996 WB bought Turner and eventually made such catalogue films it’s own. If someone in 1985 bought a copy of the film and it had this “feature” and in 1987 he tried re-watching it on a new player the disk would not work because MGM ,not having distribution rights any more, would have had to pull the title key and so the player would not be able to play the title. When WB merged Turner into WB would it make sense to assume they would have continued maintaining the “Turner server” for the guy that bought the Turner version of the VHS? I used this as an example because it is easy to say avoid the small studios and titles but here we are talking about a huge title that has passed through several big studios.